Central Ohio's Historic Prisons

By David Meyers and Elise Meyers

With the opening of the Ohio State Reformatory in 1896, the state legislature had put in place "the most complete prison system, in theory, which exists in the United States." The reformatory joined the Ohio Penitentiary and the Boys Industrial School, also central-Ohio institutions, to form the first instance of "graded prisons; with the reform farm on one side of the new prison, for juvenile offenders, and the penitentiary on the other, for all the more hardened and incorrigible class." However, even as the concept was being replicated throughout the country, the staffs of the institutions were faced with the day-to-day struggle of actually making the system work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781439620953

David Meyers

A graduate of Miami and Ohio State Universities, David Meyers has written a number of local histories, as well as several novels and works for the stage. He was recently inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame for his contributions to local history. Elise Meyers Walker is a graduate of Hofstra University and Ohio University. She has collaborated with her father on a dozen local histories, including Ohio's Black Hand Syndicate, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio and A Murder in Amish Ohio. They are both available for interviews, book signings and presentations. The authors' website is www.explodingstove.com, or one follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and RedBubble at @explodingstove.

Book preview

collection.

INTRODUCTION

On April 7, 1788, the Ohio Company named their new settlement on the banks of the Ohio River Marietta in honor of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Within four years, the citizens of Marietta, mostly members of prominent New England families, were making plans to build a courthouse—and a jail. By 1793, however, the need for the latter had become so pressing that an old log house was adapted for that purpose.

Although it would be 10 more years before Ohio achieved statehood, its first English speaking community already had a jail of sorts. (Meanwhile, the recently widowed queen was, herself, locked away as prisoner No. 280 in the Conciergerie, a former royal palace in Paris, while awaiting a date with the guillotine.)

Historically a jail or prison was a place to confine individuals accused of crimes before they went to trial. Under the British system, those found guilty were subjected to some manner of corporal or capital punishment—generally, flogging, bodily mutilation, or hanging. The idea of sentencing someone to a period of imprisonment was unknown except for debtors, derelicts, and vagrants, who were placed in a workhouse to perform hard labor.

By the time the Ohio Company arrived in the Northwest Territory, Americans were beginning to question the value of punishing criminal offenders. On September 6, 1788, Gov. Arthur St. Clair and three judges passed the first legislation in the territory regarding crimes and criminals. Of the 20 offenses and their specified penalties, murder was the only one punishable by death, possibly the first criminal code in the world to impose such a limitation.

Two years later, the first penitentiary in the United States was established at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Gaol. It consisted of a central corridor with cells lining either side. The intent was to discourage crime by segregating prisoners through solitary confinement. The word penitentiary originated with Pennsylvania’s Quakers, who believed that penitence and self-examination would lead the prisoners to salvation.

Over the next 40 years, two distinct prison models emerged. In 1817, the Auburn Plan of industry, obedience, and silence, was established in New York’s Auburn State Prison. While working together during the day, prisoners observed a strict code of silence, and then at night they were housed in individual cells. In 1829, Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary instituted the Pennsylvania System, which employed solitary confinement both day and night. The Auburn Plan eventually won out primarily for economic reasons (although it was also observed that the Pennsylvania System tended to promote mental illness).

In his annual message to the Ohio State Legislature on December 3, 1811, Gov. Return Jonathan Meigs discussed the need to build a state prison. In response, a group calling themselves the Proprietors of Columbus offered to donate two 10-acre plots of land, one for a prison and the other for a state house, along with $50,000 in cash.

The legislature accepted the offer on February 14, 1912, and construction of the first penitentiary in Ohio began the following year. Completed in 1815, it was also the first public building erected in the capital city. The prison was variously called the state penitentiary or the state prison, but in 1822 it was officially named the Ohio Penitentiary.

Not surprisingly, the Ohio Penitentiary soon proved to be of insufficient size to accommodate the needs of the courts. By 1826, Gov. Jeremiah Morrow was calling for the construction of more capacious prisons, but no funding was provided. The following year, Gov. Allen Trimble advocated either enlarging the existing prison or erecting a new one on a more improved plan.

Still no action was taken until 1833, when work began on a new prison. The original prison did not reflect any particular model, but the new one followed the Auburn Plan. A visitor to the city a couple of years later described the Ohio Penitentiary as truly a noble structure, an ornament to the city and an honor to the state, and when completed will probably be second to none in the country. While the facility remained in use until 1984, it had long ceased to be an honor to the state.

On April 16, 1857, at the urging of Gov. Salmon P. Chase, the Ohio General Assembly established the Ohio State Farm as a penal institution for boys between the ages of 8 and 18—boys who until then had been confined in the Ohio Penitentiary along with adult inmates. Cincinnati’s Charles Reemelin was appointed one of three commissioners of the institution.

A native of Germany, Reemelin’s first act was to visit many of the existing institutions for youthful offenders in the United States. However, when he found they were all of the walled-in class, he traveled to England, France, and Germany at his own expense (although he had hoped to be reimbursed) to inspect their facilities.

Particularly impressed by France’s Colonie de Mettray, Reemelin returned to Ohio determined to model the Ohio Reform Farm and School, as it came to be called, on the family or cottage system. It was constructed on 1,210 acres in the Hocking Hills, approximately six miles south of Lancaster in Fairfield County. The institution was renamed the Boys’ Industrial School in 1884, and was known as the Fairfield School for Boys when it closed in 1980.

As early as 1868, the Board of State Charities had argued for the establishment of a new prison, an intermediate penitentiary designed exclusively to accommodate young men. Allen O. Myers, chairman of the committee of prisons and prison reform (and a graduate of the Ohio Reform School as a youth), enlisted the support of Gov. George Hoadly in advocating the creation of a grand system of graded prisons; with the reform farm on one side of the new prison, for juvenile offenders, and the penitentiary on the other, for all the more hardened and incorrigible class.

However, these recommendations went unheeded until the 66th General Assembly of 1884–1885 enacted a series of laws codifying the primary ideas of the New York’s Elmira State Reformatory system. Camp Mordecai Bartley, a former Civil War training facility near Mansfield, was offered as the site for the new prison. Even though the cornerstone was laid in November 1886, construction was not sufficiently advanced until September 1896 to allow 150 short-term inmates to be transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary. The Ohio State Reformatory, as it was called, remained in operation for 94 years.

As celebrated social reformer F. B. Sanborn of Massachusetts declared in 1887 at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, In Ohio, the board [of State Charities] has succeeded in establishing the most complete prison system, in theory, which exists in the United States. And this system is advancing toward practical development.

In Central Ohio’s Historic Prisons, we take a detailed look at the three 19th century Ohio prisons that laid the foundation for the state’s correctional system and, taken together, established a model that was replicated by others. Each of these institutions was once viewed as the best the